Mitt Romney Warns Tea Party Movement: No Third Party Bids

CNN.com:

Mitt Romney has a message to Tea Party candidates nationwide: If you lose your Republican primary bids, stay on the sidelines.

The former Massachusetts governor on Monday warned the grassroots movement not to mount third party efforts in general elections, which he said would siphon votes from Republican nominees.

"If there is a conservative candidate that runs in the general election, then obviously, divide and fail is the result," Romney said in an interview with the conservative Web site Newsmax. "Hopefully Tea Party candidates will run in respective primaries and they will either win or lose. And if they win, they will go into the general. If they lose, they won't, and they will get behind the more conservative of the two finalists."

Romney explained that "dividing our conservative effort in the general elections" would "basically hand the country to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and that would be very sad indeed."

Some will say Romney's scared, but this is about common sense. Now's not the time to be launching 3rd-party bids, not unless you want the same folks raising taxes as well as our deficit and putting jobs on the back burner, to stay in office. Hell, a 3rd-party bid is the kind of thing Harry Reid goes to bed every night praying for.